Long before we reached the scene of complete destruction, we came upon houses shattered, bottom stories bereft of superstructure, door and window-frames driven in, gable-ends standing up alone, without the roofs they were raised to bear. The streets were filled with the rubbish. Here was a little fragment of a wall, twenty bricks, perhaps, lying sidewise as they fell, still fastened by the unbroken mortar; there the whole outer course of a gable-end dropped flat, and paving the street. Other walls would still be standing; but six or eight feet from the ground the outer course of bricks had been abruptly started outward an inch or more, and thence upward the wall imitated the direction—but by no means, as we momentarily witnessed, the security—of the leaning towers of Pisa. All this passed, we came to the scene of actual explosion. Here, for eight or ten squares, was one waste of broken brick and mortar, still smouldering and smoking, and still—horrible thought!—roasting beneath this parched debris its human victims. Solid warehouses, chimneys, cotton-presses, machinery, all had been flattened as a whirlwind might flatten a house of card-boards. It was a sickening sequel to such a scene to listen, as we afterward did, to the descriptions by our surgeons in the old United States hospital, of the condition in which the Rebels had left it, filthy to the last degree, full of neglected sick men, destitute of medicines, or, indeed, of the commonest hospital comforts. Several of the surviving victims of the explosion had been brought here, who all seemed to attribute it to Rebel torpedoes, fired by design. Among the soldiers who filled the other wards, it was curious to watch the recognition of the Chief Justice, by his likeness on the one-dollar greenbacks. Finally he entered into conversation with a soldier in one of the outer hospital tents, who told him he was from Ohio. “Ah, so am I.” “Are you? from what part?” asked the soldier. “Don’t you know Mr. Chase, your former Governor?” suggested General Andrews. “O yes; but, Governor, you must remember we haven’t seen any of them greenbacks o’ your’n for so long, we’ve kinder forgot the look o’ your features!” It seemed the paymaster had neglected him. ----- Footnote 26: One of the best private libraries I have ever seen in the South belongs to a wealthy young Kentuckian, who has had a handsome catalogue of it printed. The books are classified for enumeration under subjects. Under the head of “Sports” were set down, first came others on the laws and usages of dueling! I was assured that the classification was intentional, and in accordance with Southern ideas., some works on gunning, fishing, cock-fighting, etc. Among these Footnote 27: